Obama 'fear' drives religious right

Fear of President Barack Obama — not enthusiasm for Mitt Romney — is driving religious conservatives to pull the lever for the GOP nominee this November.

Romney — a former Massachusetts governor who came late to the anti-abortion rights cause — was never a favorite of evangelical voters during the Republican primaries, and their love for him hasn’t grown much now that he has officially become their party’s standard bearer, as judged by interviews with two dozen conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington this weekend.

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But religious conservatives will support Romney because Obama — who endorsed same-sex marriage earlier this year — is anathema to them. And as much as they are lukewarm about Romney, conservatives are thrilled by the GOP nominee’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate.

“It’s not excitement, it is fear — fear of the other guy,” said Dolores Taylor, 69, of West Harrison, N.Y., explaining why she will vote for Romney over Obama in November. “Excited doesn’t seem to be the right word — I’d say energized, because I’m so angry about what’s going on.”

Jackie Lewis, a woman from Ashburn, Va., echoed those sentiments, calling the motivating factor behind her decision to back Romney “total fear”of the incumbent.

“We can’t take four more years of this,” she said.

Fear of a second Obama administration was a centerpiece at this two-day confab of social conservatives a little less than two months before the election. Romney did not attend the conference — and perhaps demonstrating their mixed feelings about the GOP standard bearer, the speakers didn’t mention him until halfway through the first day — but Ryan, a fiercely anti-abortion rights Wisconsin lawmaker who is Catholic, did.

Conservatives attending the conference said they worried about a range of things during a possible Obama II, from implementation of the president’s health care law, and a move to what they saw as more “socialist” policies to the end of the very values — including the protection of life and traditional marriage — that they came to the summit to support.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), for example, framed the campaign as a battle for the very core of the country, saying another term for Obama would continue the nation’s decline.

“This election is going to determine whether or not the very moral fabric of our country will be upheld, or whether it will be torn apart,” he said.